I dug up an old news story about a threatened ACLU lawsuit. Here’s the link:
http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N70/col70dan.70c.html
And excerpts (the first and last paragraphs):
I agree with the author. I think the ACLU went too far, and knew it could bully the town.
What do you think?
The larger question is: What organization doesn’t over-reach, bully, and push it’s own agenda? The expressed ideals are often overrun by the zealot portion of of any group no matter how benign or ‘worthy’ the intended goals of the larger organization. It’s easy to focus on the stupidity of a local chapter who may be just a handful of extremists and miss the overall accomplishments of the larger organization. Take PETA for example. Local chapters make the larger group look ridiculous in many cases. The same for any small extremist group who get the media coverage and splash shit all over the larger group. The ACLU is just as vulnerable as any other organization being used by idiots to push their extremist agendas.
It’s common practice today to play up the the extremist activities of any or all groups. It’s useful politics, sells newspapers, and goes ‘viral’ on the net. Most of it is just ‘communication reality’ designed to distract from the overall good (or evil) of an organization.
Do all Christians burn copies of the Koran? Nah, just a few dipshits in Florida looking for their 15 minutes of fame… 
I agree with tentative. You can always find something a group you don’t like does and then reduce the group down to that.
But groups like ACLU and Amnesty International are instrumental to democracy. And I don’t believe it is just a coincidence that, more likely than not, it is the reactionaries who go after them. Both of the religious and the ideological ilk.
Looks like I’m gonna have to dig up a few more examples…
I’ll help you… Look at the example of ACORN. Here’s an organization whose aim is to get people into mainstream politics and off the street. BUT… a handful of idiots go against the ideals, the rules, the intent of the larger organization and look who gets the media coverage? The fact that the repubs didn’t like watching the great unwashed getting involved in politics and sent in a hit squad to kill the program is an interesting side show, but all of it obscures the good work done by the organization at large.
The ACLU are like any union - they ignore real issues in favour of attention-seeking ones.
For example, if trade unions really gave a fuck about the economy, they’d call for a general strike in favour of abolishing the Fed, prosecuting the banksters and demanding Wall Street pay off the national debt, since they created out of nothing in the first place. Instead, they just whinge and moan and keep the Fed Govt as big as they possibly can, i.e. as indebted as they possibly can, and no doubt will find someone else to blame when it goes bankrupt (or rather, when everyone realises it has gone bankrupt).
Likewise, the ACLU should be shutting down Guantanamo, taking on the war on drugs (which is just a massive subsidy to the prison industrial complex) and demanding the prosecution of EVERYONE involved in the torturing of ‘terror suspects’. Instead, they are concerning themselves with snowplows in church car parks.
I’m not even sure I understand this story - why does the ACLU even care about this? Can someone explain to me what their argument was because this doesn’t seem like a civil liberties issue to me…
Went too far as in their position is extreme? Or went too far as in their actions were bold and slightly annoying?
I disagree with the article regarding the legality of the situation. Whatever precedent has been set by some particular case, I’ve seen enough Supreme Court rulings to take that with a grain of salt. I think the town is clearly acting unconstitutionally.
Siatd - It’s the issue of separation of church and state. Supposedly.
anon - I disagree, for the same reasons that the writer of the article does. No denomination was favored. But in a more commonsense way, simply plowing the parking lots does not reasonably promote religion at all, nor did the cessation of the plowing hurt any religion. There’s just no effect on religion per se. It was just a courtesy, not to any religion, but to the residents of the town.
As you know, I am an atheist, but this was not so much bold as stupid, in my view. It’s annoying because they went too far, but also because the ACLU does this a lot - they grab headlines by threatening an entity that they know will not fight back. It would not be worth the while of the town to join in a lawsuit, as those are expensive. No resident of the town ever complained, as far as is known. The ACLU made a constitutional issue out of something that previously wasn’t an issue at all, for anyone who was affected by the plowing.
When I have time, I’m going to dig up some more examples of the stupidity of the ACLU, which might put my view in better context.
A few words from the bigger picture…
As an old fart, I can remember a time before everybody was an activist.
The civil rights movement of the 60s was a very righteous and respected enterprise, which fully deserved the applause it accumulated. So far so good.
But now everybody wants in on the glamorous ego boosting action. Everybody wants to point the finger and adamantly revel in fantasy moral superiority. When I read stories like those Faust is sharing, that’s what I see, the march of activist ego finally reaching it’s fully absurd Monty Python style climax.
PS: For the purposes of this post, please ignore my sig!! 
Faust that’s not just the aclu. It’s what lawyers do. If I can intimidate someone such that I save a ton of time and effort, and I get the result that I desire, why would I do anything else no matter what the cause? It’s just efficiency. If the opposing party knows they are right, then they have no reason to back down. Should be able to recover fees in a frivolous case. But maybe they thought theirs was frivolous too.
Maybe being right doesn’t have that much to do with some of these cases? In order to prove you’re right against a well equipped opponent, you need to be in position to put a bunch of money on the table, and you need to be in a position to lose that money. If you’re not in that position, you lose.
If a business fails to envision a liability and doesn’t prepare for it, its not the responsibility of the victim to take care of the consequences is it?
I can see the ACLU’s pov. Why just religious parking lots? Doesn’t that violate separation of church and state? If I lived there, as a taxpayer, I would be pretty angry to see tax dollars used so preferentially. If they did the same for all parking lots, that would be OK.
I don’t know, Faust. Would this particular town plow my driveway? My business’s driveway? Of course not. We’re not special enough.
I’ve had the town plow spend a minute at the end of my driveway, after plowing me in and then going down the street a bit later and seeing me shoveling away the snowbank they made. That’s a nice thing to do. Cops routinely let people off, if they “seem like good upstanding folk”. I guess it’s just a matter of how far things like this go, and if a case can be made that a particular kind of person is being favored, or discriminated against. Were the town plows only helping out caucasians? Were the cops only letting off young women? Are the plows in some quaint town only plowing the parking lots of religions?..
But yeah, a lot of people are annoyed at the ACLU. I can understand that, but without knowing more about it I’d make the comparison to a lot of other things that annoy people. Demanding the right to sit in the front of the bus was annoying to a lot of people. I realize we’re not in the same ballpark, but the principle is the same. Sometimes I have to admit that someone is right, even if they annoy me.
Just to add a little perspective, I’ll point out that this kind of thing annoys me across the board. It doesn’t have to be unconstitutional for me to side with the ACLU here. Look at school sports. I pay my taxes. I have no children. I have no problem with public education, and I may even feel like we should spend more on it, to make it better. But as it is, we spend a fortune on sports. BASKETBALL COURTS. For 5 kids. While phys. ed. is completely ignored. Yes, the mob majority wills it (supposedly; this could be argued), no, it’s not unconstitutional, but it’s really, really screwed up.
I agree up to the last sentence. Parking lots are private. Town plows should stick to plowing town roads. Compare the taxes of northern towns to the taxes of southern towns. It’s bad enough to have to pay for plowing. I shouldn’t have to pay for extra plowing, for a privileged few.
The town gets to stop plowing and look like the good guy to boot. The religions just have to plow their parking lots, just like they expected to when they made them and just like they ought to. The taxpayers (in theory) get a reduced bill next year.
Smears -
It’s hardly clear that this would be considered a frivolous case. The town had many reasons to back down - all of them dollars.
What victim? What business? This was a town.
jonq -
There are no religious parking lots. They’re just parking lots, that the people of the town use. So, if there was a church at the end of a road, which owned land that ran along each side of the road for a half a mile, then the town shouldn’t plow that last half mile of road, on the pretext that only religious people use that last half mile of road?
The disestablishment clause was meant to prevent the state from favoring one religion over the other, and not to prevent the state from offering conveniences (like the near-universal tax exemption that churches have in the US) to any and all religions.
anon -
I’m, not sure any but caucasians live in that town.
I’m not sure I follow. You’re comparing this to civil rights? You are claiming that someone’s rights are violated when a town plows church parking lots? I’m scratchin’ my head.
So, if we had fewer basketball courts, plowing the lots would be okay? Look - we fund education because it benefits society as a whole. I’m still not sure how banning church lot plowing benefits society as a whole.
Firstly, almost everyone in Barrington has the spare cash. It’s one of the wealthiest communities in the state. More importantly, no one complained. It’s not as though people protested at town meeting and got nowhere. No one in the actual town objected. The ACLU lawyers didn’t live in Barrington. That’s not in the story, but I read about this this as it happened.
Jesus. First the church lots get plowed, then pretty girls get away with speeding, negroes go back to the rear of the bus, and only caucasians get town services. I guess you’re right. Allow the plowing, and the world goes to hell.
If I can’t park in the church’s parking lot because I don’t go to church there, it’s not a public parking lot. You’re kidding, right?